 Traveling with an infant (less than 2 years old) comes with its own planning, excitement and anxiety. Infant ticketing is most inconsistently defined by various carriers and the rules for the award cost for infant vary wildly specially for international travel. The good news is having knowledge of infant ticketing rules on awards can help decide whether its worth the comfort of traveling on award ticket.
There are 3 ways in which carrier want to charge for the infant's on award tickets:
It is important to note that most often it is the ticketing airlines which decides the price of the infant ticket and on an award flight the ticketing carrier might be different than the operating carrier. Also if you have multiple carriers on award ticket than it might complicate ticketing the infant and best advice would be to avoid such award tickets. So, given the above costs and "gotcha's" for premium cabin award it is best to go with the ticketing carrier which either charges in "miles" for infant or has a flat dollar or mileage cost. Given that premise below are the best carriers for award ticket solely based on "Infant" ticket cost (Note: You will still need to weigh if it is best carrier based on award ticket cost for the parent and award availability). Aeroplan (Star alliance): Aeroplan charges flat mileage or dollar amount based on class of service for international travel on any of star alliance partner awards:
British Airways (Oneworld alliance): British Airways charges 10% of mileage cost of Adult award ticket + taxes & fees. Do note that the taxes & fees are typically same as what would be applied to adult ticket, so depending on the operating carrier it may or may not be the best deal but definitely better than paying 10% of revenue fare. Virgin Atlantic (No alliance): Virgin Atlantic charges below amount depending on class of service:
Most other carriers charge 10% of revenue fare which can make it prohibitive for infant tickets if you are looking for Business class or First class awards. You can always book an award ticket for the infant but you will need additional award seat available and have to shell out the same mileage amount as the adult award ticket. So, choose wisely the ticketing carrier for award when travelling with infant otherwise it may well break your budget. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.
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 Aeroplan has current transfer bonus of 35% more miles when you convert your Marriott Bonvoy points to Aeroplan miles. Usually Marriott points transfer at ratio of 3:1. Transferring 30k Marriott points would yield 10k Aeroplan miles. The current transfer bonus offer of Aeroplan is set to expire on 06/26/2019. Below is one example of how the offer would work.   35% bonus Aeroplan miles when transferring from Marriott Bonvoy If you are planning to take advantage of this promotion, do remember to check the award space including the phantom space on Aeroplan website before you transfer any points as otherwise you might be out of luck. Below is an example search which shows availability for Singapore Airlines in Business Class.  Award Availability for Singapore Airlines Business Class Given above it might be easy to believe that award is available to book with Aeroplan miles. The important thing to remember is to click the "Book" button to see if it allows to go forward. Usually if it is phantom space as is the case above it will error out saying the space is not available. Alternatively you can call Aeroplan and confirm the availability with them before you transfer your points.
The above will ensure that your transferred miles are put to use as intended. Aeroplan miles expire after 1 year of no activity on the account so only transfer if you have immediate use and the award space is available. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website. Ever wondered, which airline flies which route and what are the flight options for the given city? Would that not be much easier if there was single source or page listing all the flights departing a airport? or showing flight details between two city pair?. Although no single website exists which could satisfy this needs there are several resources which could help you find that info. Below are some of the useful websites which can help you get that info, which would help you finalize that missing puzzle of your successful award or revenue travel. Flightconnections.com Currently in beta flightconnections will help you find what are the "destinations" served from the airport of your desire and if you key in source/destination pair the available airline/flight options between those two airport/city pair. Of-course you could click on one of those airlines and go to one of their "affiliate" booking web-page, but at least you get the info you need.  Sample flight routes from SFO-LAX on flightconnections.com OpenFlights.org Open Flights is like a wikipedia of flights. As it is open-source it is maintained by community of volunteers, and thus would have good info albeit some of the info might be wrong. The interesting part is you could view or list flights from a given "airport" or "city" and the data could be either seen as a map or read as a list. You can even sort the data as well as filter per the "airlines". As seen from below snapshots!  Sample search for departures from San Francisco Airport on openflights.org  All routes from SFO listed on openflights.org  Routes shortlisted to the one on American Airlines on openflights.org QuickTrip.com This tool would be useful if you know the source and destination as well as the dates of your travel and want to know all the available flight options. So, although limited compared to open flights or flightconnection it is still useful as it can quickly list all the options on various airlines as can be seen from below search.  QuickTrip.com flight options from SFO-LAX AirlineRouteMaps.com This website requires a little more info before spitting out the route-map but it is useful if you are looking for a route map by "region" or "airline". You could plug in your short-listing criteria and get set of route-maps which are available. You can see a simple search for American Airlines below yields links to various route maps by region as well detailed info on the "hubs".  Airline Route Maps for American Airlines various destinations Airline Route Mapper
Airline route mapper is another tool which was created by flyertalk member cockpitvisit. You need to download this tool but it does list a fairly comprehensive and updated route map. So, if you are one of those who do lot of search and do not mind installing this tool on your laptop/desktop then this is for you. Apart from above there is a route map (which might be a little limited in its usage but still useful) for One World Alliance routes which can be found here and Star Alliance routes which can be found here. There is a current promotion going on which caught my eye today. Aeroplan is running a great promotion where you earn bonus miles when you transfer your financial services, car rental, hotels and points.com points to Aeroplan till 13th of May 2013. Below are the partner list and chart of points earned. 
Starwoods, Marriott, Wyndham & SPG are partners
As I had discussed in my earlier post of 50% bonus on transferred hotel points to US Airways, how to take advantage of the transfer using Marirott and Wyndham, I would not discuss that here, but in addition there are few other pluses in this transfer: 1. SPG is also a partner, so for every transfer of 20k SPG points you already earn 5k bonus miles from SPG, but in addition you would now also earn bonus miles of 4k from Aeroplan. So 20k SPG points would get you 29k Aeroplan Miles. 2. The bonus is calculated after considering the total miles you accumulate by transfer from all the partners cumulatively. That means you can transfer over points from various hotel partners to earn a maximum of 40k Aeroplan bonus miles when you get 150k Aeroplan miles deposited in your account. Note: Transfer from American Express Membership Rewards does not count towards this bonus. You can check out the full list of terms & conditions on the bonus offer page here. There is a hidden value in the transfer which makes this promotion more interesting and that's "points.com". If you head over to "points.com" you will realize that Aeroplan Miles can be exchanged (minimum of 15k Aeroplan miles required) for US Airways miles at a ratio of 1 : 0.84. Not only that if you look closely you will find out that you can transfer your points to Asia Miles (Cathay Pacific) at a ratio of 1 : 0.724 as well as to Hawaiian Airlines miles at ratio of 1 : 0.672 which are really good if you are short of few thousand's miles on those account for your redemption. Considering that you cannot directly convert Wyndham points to either of Asia Miles and Hawaiian Airlines miles and adding a bonus factor to it could be a really cool value. You can see the snapshot from pionts.com below as well as conversion chart factoring in the bonus miles earned. 
points.com transfer from Aeroplan to US Airways, Hawaiian Miles and Asia Miles
Points Conversion Table from Aeroplan to US Airways, Asia Miles & Hawaiian Miles
Thus if you missed the US Airways 50% bonus promotion (which was limited to only 1st transfer), you could very well use this promotion to get US Airways miles, but in addition to that you could very well get Asia Miles and Hawaiian Airline miles at reasonable loss in miles value (as well as transfer from Wyndham Rewards becomes a possibility).
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